The Little Things
by shelllessturtle
Summary: Belle doesn't like it when he uses magic to fix her injuries, and Rumplestiltskin slowly comes to realize why.


She doesn't like it when he fixes her injuries. It is an odd quirk of hers that he finds out about less than two weeks after her arrival, and it puzzles him exceedingly. Who would want to live with bruises and cuts when they don't have to?

He notices the long, thin cut on her right arm as she is dusting and he is spinning. It is scabbed over, so it obviously hadn't happened just then, but she also hadn't come to him for help. Perhaps she doesn't realize all that his magic can do? But she is smart; she would be able to make that leap of logic. Perhaps she doesn't think he would be willing to help her. He had, after all, given her a dungeon for her bedroom.

But he can't have the cut getting infected. What would he do with a one-armed maid? Or worse, a dead one? "Dearie?"

She ignores him.

He holds back a sigh. She had stopped responding to that after she had gotten over her initial fear. She had said that she is no longer just another person to deal with, and if she is to work for him forever, he can call her by her name.

"Belle?"

"Yes, Rumplestiltskin?"

He stands up and walks over to her. He can't remember when he had stopped spinning. "What happened here?" he asks as he just barely grazes the pale skin next to the angry red wound.

She doesn't flinch, or freeze, or even shudder at his touch. She just glances at it, and then turns back to her work, letting his fingertips linger. "I wasn't paying attention to where I was working and cut myself on a sharp bit of metal on a suit of armor," she tells him. "It's not deep, and I cleaned it, so it shouldn't get infected."

"You cleaned it?" Ladies know how to clean their own wounds?

She smiles, as if she knows what he is thinking. "I've always been a bit…inattentive to my surroundings, and eventually it just became easier to learn to tend to my own scrapes than to always find someone else to do so for me."

The Dark One he may be, but he is _not_ a monster; he will prove her father wrong. "I could heal it for you," he offers.

Now she does jerk away from him. "With magic? No, thank you."

She can't be afraid of magic, can she? She had clearly been the smartest person in that war room, so it had probably been _her_ idea to summon him. "Why not?" He bites his words off before the mocking endearment (that does not feel quite so mocking with her) can slip out.

She glances at him, and then back at the cut. "All magic comes with a price." She could so easily be mocking or accusatory, flinging his oft-repeated phrase back at him, but instead, she is gentle but firm, laying the words at his feet.

He smiles, missing the playful and mocking expression (and where exactly is all his mockery?) that he is aiming for and simply getting softness. "The price of healing isn't much, just the same amount of energy it would take to heal on its own."

"The first time, yes," she agrees, "but eventually?" She shakes her head. "It would get harder and harder with every healing. Things can become resistant to magic, and I'd rather wait for something that truly needs healing. The little things don't matter."

_But they do!_ He wants to howl it at her. It is always the little things, because they add up, and eventually there would come a tipping point, like the point where he could no longer bury the cowardly things he had done, or the point where his son could no longer turn a blind eye to the evil he had become. A tipping point of one big thing, and what they would see when they looked back was a thousand little things all pointing in this direction.

"And besides," she is still talking, and smiling at that, "once something heals over, isn't it stronger for the scars?"

No, he wants to argue, because now that his son is gone, his heart is more fragile than ever.

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She is a clumsy little thing, his maid. Not in big ways, never drastically, and she herself takes the most damage from it. And even then, there isn't much damage done, just scrapes and bruises, and still she refuses to let him heal her.

He does once without her knowing, heals a skinned knee he had seen her acquire, and when she discovers it as she is dressing for bed that night, she is furious. She explodes into the Main Hall as he sits at his wheel, spinning. In the three months she has been living in his castle, it is the angriest he has ever seen her (_and,_ the Darkness informs him, _the angriest he'll ever see her_) and he can't fathom why. He has taken away her pain; what is there to be upset about?

"It's my body!" she shouts. "I may be your servant, but I am not a possession to do with as you please! Whether or not you agree with them, my decisions about myself are _mine_ to make, and you cannot disregard them!"

It is then that he realizes how it must look to her. He had only meant to help her, but she is right; he _had_ taken away her bodily autonomy, had violated her on some level (though hopefully not badly enough to give her nightmares—even _his_ Darkness is not that deep), and she has every right to be upset. He should apologize, he knows, but as he struggles to get the words past the Darkness that fights to keep them in, that fights never to admit guilt, she turns on her heel and leaves the room.

She doesn't speak to him for a week, and he lets her. She is angry, and she deserves to be angry after what he has done, so he doesn't push for conversation. As the days pass, though, the silence gets darker and harder, and suddenly it occurs to him that perhaps she is waiting for him to break it, to do the right thing.

She is dusting again when the words finally force themselves free. "I'm sorry." She turns, her expression still hard, but neutral nonetheless, not angry. "I only wanted to help, but it was wrong of me to try and decide your fate for you. I'm sorry." The words are not as hard to get out the second time around.

She softens, appearing to recognize true contrition. "Don't do it again," she says, but the words are gentle, once more placed firmly at his feet, not flung in accusation.

As she goes back to her chores, he knows he is forgiven, and he knows he will forever abide by her wishes.

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It is twice that time again after that that she _does_ let him heal her. It is not the first time she has toppled from one of his ladders (and really, he must get them fixed if she is to be clambering all over them), but this time, he is not there to catch her. He appears at her side the instant after she cries his name (but he is not her puppy, to come eagerly when called; he simply hadn't been doing anything, and her voice had sounded so _pained_), and is seconds after kneeling next to her.

She cradles her right arm close to her chest, and tries to blink back tears. "I think it's broken," she murmurs, and there is a strain in her voice; he knows she is trying valiantly not to cry.

He does not reach for her, does not instinctively summon his magic as he would have for Bae (and when exactly has he begun comparing what he would do for Belle to what he would have done for his son?) because she may not like it. "What would you have me do?" he asks, and the words are softer than he intended, with none of the harshness he had been searching for.

Her laugh is watery. "Heal it, please," she almost whispers. "This is big enough."

"It _is_ true that you wouldn't be able clean properly with a broken arm." The words are gentle and teasing, not mocking, like they should be (and why is his mockery always gone when it comes to Belle?), and they make her smile as purple smoke covers her arm. He realizes with a start that she was right all those months ago; nothing about her resists his magic, though her other hand grips his vest with surprising strength and her face tightens in pain as he presses the broken edges back together for better healing. Perhaps there is something to be said for letting nature take its course. He certainly does not need to force anything to fix this.

When his magic clears, she flexes the freshly-whole arm, then loosens her hand from his vest. Before truly releasing him, though, her fingers stroke down his silk-clad arm and wrap themselves around his own digits, squeezing gently. She leans forward and presses a kiss to his cheek, murmuring, "Thank you."

Distantly, some part of him mentions that, were his nose not full of the scent of her hair or his mind fogged by her nearness, he would notice that something very significant has just crossed his mind. But he is too distracted to pay it much heed.

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She hasn't lost any of her clumsiness while locked in Regina's prison, nor has she gained any more. The thought is strangely comforting.

"This brings back memories," she remarks with a laugh. She sits on the toilet in his bathroom in Storybrooke, and he is perched on the edge of the bathtub, her right arm in his hands. Once more, the back of it sports a long, shallow cut, though this time it is fresh and she is letting him help. He points this out gently (not mockingly; never mockingly with Belle) as he carefully spreads antiseptic cream across the injury, and she laughs again. "I would have let you do this, Rumple," she tells him. "Even in the beginning. Surely you can see the difference between this and magic."

And he can. He sees it with a clarity he can hardly fathom, finally understands what he missed in the Enchanted Forest, back when she had first let him perform magic on her. Nature heals things back stronger, as long as it is allowed to do so. Pretending that the little things never happened is what makes the big things so much worse when they come about, but dealing with them correctly can make the big things more easily managed than could be imagined.

"I do now," he whispers as he secures a long, adhesive bandage over the cut. He turns her arm over and presses a gentle kiss to the inside of her wrist. "And I have you to thank for teaching me."

She sighs happily and drifts into his arms, kissing his cheek and then tucking her head under his chin. There is a part of him (the part that had been hidden by his Darkness before) that is so ready to accept this peace, and it is that part that carefully cradles the knowledge that yes, the little things are important, but more important still is how they are handled.


End file.
